Nicholas Kristof Quotes

Alanna didn't approve of lying, but in a pinch a lie was sometimes better than the truth.

An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.

I don't see much use in general slogans. Sometimes it is worth resisting evil with lesser evil, very commonly in fact.

The 'morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

There are no journalistic ethics that transcend the value of human life. There are none. In a situation where you can save a human life, you must. There isn't any conflict in my mind.

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

We cannot sacrifice innocent human life now for vague and exaggerated promises of medical treatments thirty of forty years from now. There are ways to pursue this technology and respect life at the same time.

An ethical action, like an unethical action, is usually analyzed by politicians purely in pragmatic terms.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

Everybody is a hypocrite. You can't live on this planet without being a hypocrite.

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

If the end does not justify the means, what does?

Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results.

The end must justify the means.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises?

It was a morally representative act. Helms withheld the information because it would have cost him his job.

What's stronger-the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?

I killed one man to save 100,000.

I think when hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line, you might have to set aside some principles.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.